1. Technical Field
This invention relates to the field of publishing, and in particular, to a confluence of printed and electronic publishing in a hypermedia document portal viewable in a retail kiosk.
2. Description of the Related Art
A hypermedia document system has as its primary function establishing links between hypermedia documents, each of which can be expected to provide different kinds of information and data. Books, magazines, journals, newspapers and the like are now widely available in hypermedia document format, under the general category now commonly referred to as electronic publishing. Still, there is a strong feeling among many people that a certain kind of “magic” one can experience curled up in a chair with a good book is utterly lacking in electronic publishing, and always will be lacking. As a result, the two media have always lacked, and continue to lack an advantageous common ground which provides readers with the advantages of both media, namely the “magic” of a book in hand and the extraordinary ability of hypermedia documents to link contextually relevant information contained in various hypermedia documents.
Despite the availability of copies of printed publications in hypermedia document format, and even the availability of electronically published magazines without any corresponding printed versions, until recently, there has not been a confluence of printed and electronic publishing beyond the mere substitution of one medium for the other. Specifically, U.S. Pat. No. 6,034,60 issued on Mar. 7, 2000 to Kessenich et al. (Kessenich) for SUPPLYING SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION FOR PRINTED BOOKS teaches the combination of publishing printed material and publishing electronic hypermedia documents in the form of Web pages. Specifically, a method is disclosed in which a plurality of different printed books are distributed to a user base, where each book has a corresponding title. A common Internet address can be associated with each different printed book having a common title. In a first Web page at the common Internet Web address, a user in the user base can be identified according to a particular user class. Responsive to identifying the user class, a second Web page can be provided which as supplementary information pertaining to the book associated with the common Internet Web address. Significantly, the supplementary information is consonant with the user class.
Still, in implementing the method disclosed in Kessenich, each printed book must contain a reference to the common Internet address. Thus, there typically exists a linkage between the publisher of the printed book and the provider of the Web pages. Consequently, the Kessenich method cannot easily accommodate printed books supplied by multiple publishers without further providing Web pages containing the supplemental information provided by multiple electronic publishers. This limitation however, can inhibit the use of the Kessenich method in an atmosphere of books originating from multiple publishers, for example a retail book store or library. Hence, what is needed is a hypermedia document portal for providing a point of common access to supplemental information corresponding to printed books originating from multiple publishers.